Kaitlyn Carreon | Chelsea Groeber | Cirella Smith
Describe what brought you to this research:
After having conversations with the guidance counselors and looking at the comprehensive counseling plan for seniors we noticed that there was a plan for seniors who had post-secondary plans, but there were not any programs in place for those who were not interested in attending college right away. We also had conversations with the English Language Learner team and learned that long term English Language Learner students were significantly not meeting the graduation requirements in comparison to the general population of the school. We figured that we wanted to give support to those seniors, especially the English Language Learner students, who were not planning on attending a four-year college right after high school. Our hope was that by having the students take career assessments and explore careers based off of their interests, values and skills, they would have a better plan for after high school. In addition, we wanted to support the students by giving them the necessary tools that they need in order to get a job such as learning how to build a resume, write a cover letter and learn interview techniques to see if that would also help with their transition into the workplace.
What was your specific research question?
Will providing guided career exploration assessment and teaching job preparation skills increase student confidence and ability to choose a career path and get a job?
How has action research prepared you for your current career?
All three of us are currently in the process of obtaining our school counseling credential and completing our Masters in Counseling at California State University, East Bay. Our action research project has taught us how to look at the school system as a whole and to identify how we can best support the needs of all of the students at the school.
Career Guidance for Graduating Seniors
Abstract
Making the transition from high school to the workplace can be difficult for students and many students could benefit from extra support and guidance. This transition phase can be complicated by the fact that many students do not know what they want to do and how to make that happen (creating a resume, writing a cover letter, preparing for an interview, interviewing, and following up after an interview). The goal of this group was to provide senior students with the tools and skills to transition from high school to the workplace successfully and to help them see the connection between what they are learning in school and the career paths they are interested in. This group was implemented over an eight week period with ten seniors who reported not going to a four-year college after high school and reported feeling unsure of their career plans. The results showed that there was an increase in the student’s knowledge and confidence about different aspects of career development and that their confidence and self-efficacy in regards to career readiness increased. For example, the percentage of students who knew what to wear to an interview increased from 10% to 100%. In addition, the student’s mean confidence increased from a 3.7 to 5.8 on a scale of 1-7 while 60% of the students reported that they were either very comfortable or extremely comfortable with writing resumes by the end of the group. We would like to implement our lessons into the comprehensive counseling program in the upcoming years, however, next time we would like to do these lessons earlier in the student’s academic career, either during the beginning of their senior year or by splitting up the group in half by doing the first half of the lessons their junior year and the second half their senior year.
To explore more of Kaitlyn, Chelsea and Cirella's action research, see the file provided below:
ARSC Doc.pdf